Copyright, licensing, infringement, stealing, solutions.

A respected and notable champion of copyright and it’s monetization. A regular speaker and professor for blue-chip companies, government agencies and Ivy Universities such as Harvard, NARM, Nielsen Ratings, UN, and much much more. The man who has most influenced my thinking, my mentor, my friend, Jim Griffin.

Below is Jim’s response to a DJ named “count” that proposes downloading anything is a crime worthy of heavy prison sentences. Despite not having nor even working towards a solution, “count” insults those that have been developing solutions and champions freedom.

Free means your actions are voluntary.

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Infringement is not stealing.

Technology is going to make it more voluntary to pay, not less, regardless
of how we feel. It is our history, it is our future: It will be
exponentially easier, year after year, to copy zeroes and ones. This is a
certainty that we know to be true.

The net is religion. Access is a right. People generally tithe more to the
net, share with their search engines their deepest secrets, will topple
their government for unfettered access. Much of the world has already
declared it a basic human right, and the rest is leaning that way.

Compensation is one thing, control quite another. Find quickly a path to the
former in the form of a business deal, but give up on the latter. It’s not
coming back.

I repeat: You are not dealing with theft, you are not dealing with stealing.
You are dealing with copying digits, and depending on the laws where you
live it may or may not be infringing in some manner, but it is only rarely a
crime.

I think creativity in music, movies and books still more important than is
the bakery. You demean art and culture by comparing them to commodities and
objects.

Gutenberg was a pirate. Ptolemy’s Library at Alexandria was a pirate. The
piano roll was a pirate. All of them “thieves” according to you, which is
ridiculous, as is your suggestion that it is slowly devaluing basic human
values.

I’ll tell you what devalues basic human values: Suggesting for even a moment
that art, knowledge, culture, innovation in the form of books, movies and
music should be allocated on the size of your parents’ wallet.

I would not leave them to a tip jar, but your notions will, count, because
all this time you spend praying to the God of control will do nothing to
save your patient, whereas a healthy dose of thinking about how we can
equalize access and get artists paid at the same time will prove timely and
helpful. Calling it theft or stealing when it is not only diminishes your
cause.